


i will soothe even the bruise i cannot see

by bramblecircuit



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Cuddling, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, Hurt/Comfort, Masturbation, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, bugs (hallucinated/not real), but healthy this time, but i wanted to be on the safe side, gratuitous depictions of touch, if you're a csa survivor be kind to yourself if you read this, implied csa, implied sexual trauma, non-verbal communication, probably somewhere between m and e, self-harm through masturbation, touch-starvation, which get replaced with healthy coping mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:55:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23961937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bramblecircuit/pseuds/bramblecircuit
Summary: There was little in the world Tim loved more than being gentle with Sasha.
Relationships: Sasha James/Tim Stoker
Comments: 5
Kudos: 76





	i will soothe even the bruise i cannot see

Sasha bit her lip to keep the sobs from breaking. It wasn’t hard, not once you got the hang of it, and Sasha had been practicing since she was a child. She would sit on her bed, knees pulled to her chest, head turned to the half-closed window blinds. She was only absentminded, just distracted by the ways the leaves fluttered or how the cars huffed along the pockmarked street. 

Sasha pressed her teeth into her lip until the pain turned dull and constant. She slid her fingers between her legs almost without noticing, her mind caught in the fantasy warped by fear, the nightmarish anticipation of an assailant creeping up to her bed. She pried herself open, shuddering as she forced a finger inside herself. Tim slept beside her, his breathing slow and easy. But Sasha was far away, trapped in the ghostly memory of her childhood bedroom. The handmade quilt on the bed with its clumsy depictions of fairytales. The sheets her hallucinations filled with bugs, thick antennae twitching. The promise of skittering touch she didn’t ask for.

The sound of the door creaking open. Heavy footsteps.

The creak of the bed frame as someone climbed on. 

Sasha licked the blood off her lip and forced another finger to join the first.

This wasn’t about pleasure. Not exactly. If she wanted to be sweet to herself, she’d wake Tim up. Tim was like honey, slow and familiar and everywhere. He was gentle with her until he wasn’t, careful to check in, eager to work her up. 

_“Very good, Sasha. You’re being such a good girl for me.”_ A tear dribbled down Sasha’s cheek as the fragment of memory dislodged itself from the wall of her mind and floated to the center.

Tim was never boring when he praised her. He’d said the word once, his mouth hot on her neck, and pulled away immediately when she froze, the life all but floating out of her. He never slipped up again. He called her perfect, and lovely, and impossible, but he never called her good. Told her he didn’t even miss the word when she apologized for it once, said she deserved a better adjective. 

“I’m a walking thesaurus,” he said, kissing her, his hands wandering from her face to her neck. “I’ll try out every synonym.” 

He always asked, never in so many words, if today was the right kind of day for her to lose control. He loved her fickleness with it, too, loved how she said yes then retracted, maneuvering them so he was below her, a sunbeam of shock lighting up his face. “You give me the most obscene butterflies,” he’d said once, cooking the two of them breakfast. She leaned against the counter, pressing a warm mug to her chest. Tim’s eyes traveled over where one side of the button-up didn’t quite reach the other. “They’ll cut me open someday and find a dozen perfectly preserved wings.” 

She set a fresh mug of coffee next to the cutting board and hugged him from behind. “And then you’ll get grilled about your eating habits. ‘Sir, have you recently traveled to the Amazon with the intention of consuming endangered species?’” Sasha listened for the gentle workings of his heart. She tightened her grip, felt the way his body shifted as he moved, the muscles and the pudgy softness. 

“The poets will be justified,” he said, waving the spatula with the air of an actor giving a monologue. “Finally, someone who was so deeply in love they made the metaphors real.”

It didn’t matter that she’d moved in with Tim years ago. He knew every dark secret of hers—every dangerous ledge, every pathetically mundane spiral. It didn’t matter. She had her moments, sometimes, where she became the child in the bedroom—helpless, waiting for the horror she didn’t understand to be over. 

Waiting to understand the pleasure mixed in with the fear.

Sasha pressed her nails where she knew it would hurt the most and bit her tongue to hold back the little squeal of pain. A thrill went through her, the predictable, impatient arousal. She hated it. She needed it. 

She still couldn’t understand it. 

A rustle beside her. She held as still as possible, barely daring to breathe.

“Sasha?” Tim’s voice was heavy with sleep. Sasha’s heart skipped a beat as she heard the click of the lamp, and she closed her eyes against the glare. “Were you dreaming? I thought I heard you…” His voice trailed off as he got a good look at her.

“Open your eyes, Sasha,” he pleaded, and she complied, another unruly tear tracking down her cheek. “Were you hurting yourself again?” Sasha nodded, too pinned down by shame to force herself up. 

“’m sorry.” Her voice caught on the edges of the words.

“No…” Tim’s voice turned unbearably soothing. “No, I don’t blame you, you know I don’t blame you.”

“I just wanted to feel good,” she said, and it was that broken admission that forced the sobs from her chest into the space between them. “I just want to feel good.” 

Tim helped her up, looking away as she wiped her hand on her sweatpants, her body shaking with the force of the cries that were more like screams. He rubbed her back and kissed her forehead. He let her turn his worn t-shirt damp with tears, stroked her hair until it was over, until Sasha pulled away and wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

“Can you help me to the bathroom?” She said, eyes cast down. “Want to clean up.”

Tim sat in the hallway, light spilling from the bathroom onto his lap.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He called over the running water. Sasha walked out, face pale but clean, an old t-shirt and gym shorts replacing the clothes in her hands. “Or would you like…”

He’d learned by accident how to calm Sasha down from these relapses. He’d frightened her that time, forcing her hands away from herself—a gesture she’d briefly misinterpreted, going still with fear. 

“ _Fuck._ I’m sorry.” He pulled back, his face frozen in shock. “I wanted to—” He felt, for a moment, that he’d never be able to recover from this, but then Sasha inched closer and set her head against his shoulder.

He was so startled his hands flew up, grazing her wrist. Sasha sighed, one of the perfect, contented sighs he’d spent his whole life chasing after, and both of them blinked in surprise.

“Should I?” He waited for her to nod and rubbed a slow knot on the inside of her wrist. She moaned softly, wriggling closer to him, then surprising them both with a laugh.

“I’m an idiot,” she said, smearing a tear down her cheek. “I think I just wanted to be touched.”

“Is that all it was?” His voice floated with relief. “Not that it’s—I don’t mean it’s nothing—just that we can _fix_ it, I can—”

“Yes,” Sasha said, some of the familiar teasing flooding back into her voice. She gently uncurled his pinky with her fingertips. “I have _some_ confidence in your skill with your hands.”

There was little in the world Tim loved more than being gentle with Sasha.

It was one of the things he loved most about her—felt like a favorite secret, an intricate inside joke. In public, they bantered, asked their friends to intervene in meaningless arguments, stood off together at the side of parties and judged the people they didn’t know. They were intimidating, they’d been told: discerning, clever, no time for anyone’s bullshit. They were hilarious and sharp, kind and generous. They were the people you wanted at your table. It was only Martin and Jon who really knew how their voices got soft. How good Tim could be at comforting. How Sasha’s humor could undo even the most stressful circumstance.

Sasha had believed, once, that there wasn’t a true person underneath all the posturing, that every human being was a collage of one-dimensional personalities that passed for an identity. 

She had very different thoughts on the matter now.

Sasha turned off the bathroom light. She waited for Tim to get to his feet, then she pressed herself against his arm, her hair spilling against his neck like water. 

“Take me with you,” she whispered, and he picked her up, relishing more than anything the way she buried her face in the crook of his neck. She was shaking when he put her down, a little fear left, maybe, but more likely anticipation of that softness he reserved for her and her alone. 

“Can I wear your shirt?” She asked, her voice low, and Tim’s heart skipped several beats. He let her take it off him, her hands lingering on his shoulders, closing his eyes as she pulled her faded t-shirt off her back and slipped into Tim’s. 

He knew that gesture. How she always shook the sleeves out to their full length.

“I’m ready for you,” she said, her hand warm on his cheek, and he opened his eyes again.

“Where should I start?”

“Anywhere,” she said, eyes pointed at his wrists, and he knew what it meant. He hovered his hands over hers, looking to her face to confirm before setting one hand on her forearm and sliding it deliberately to her elbow. The shirt bunched up as he moved, the light blue fabric crumpled and soft. He leaned forward to brush her arm with his face, the contact tender and slow, and a soft sound fell from her mouth that made something deep within him spark.

“This what you were after?” She wound her fingers into his hair.

Tim took her other hand and rubbed circles on her wrist. He listened to her breathe—the need in her inhales, like air alone couldn’t possibly satiate her. He slid his fingertips just above the bend of her arm, a gentle spiral radiating outward. He watched her tilt her head back slightly, and he met it with a hand against her chest. She hummed when he didn’t move, a needy, familiar sound, and he pressed his thumb against one of the buttons.

“This OK?” She opened her eyes then, her lips parted slightly, and a tremor went through him, as if he were the one slowly worked to clay by her hands. He pushed the sleeve up further, rubbed his thumb in a soothing rhythm across her skin. He could worship her all night like this. 

“Please don’t leave,” she whispered, and Tim’s entire soul caught in his throat. 

“I never will.” He opened her shirt slightly and scooted himself closer. “You know that, right?” 

“I forget sometimes,” she said, her voice choked. Tim’s hands shook. How nice it would be to eliminate the need for words, if even for a moment. 

“Can I kiss you?” He asked, his hair brushing against her chin. “Maybe you’ll remember if I kiss you.” She said nothing, just slid her hand from his hair to his cheek, turning his head closer. Tim kissed her once, softly as anything, and she was on his lap in a moment, her legs wrapped around him, both hands tight in his hair as if searching for something desperately. 

_There you are,_ Tim thought as he deepened the kiss. _Not lost to me yet._ Sasha pressed his hand to her chest, her palm holding him in place. 

“Right there?” She rolled her shoulders so the shirt opened more, and Tim could hear her breathing, an unsteady, hitching sort of song, a need building until it might break. He slipped his hands under the shirt and set them on her waist. 

“I got you. I got you, OK?” Tim tried not to cry as she curled up against him, smaller and smaller until she was like a baby bird in his hand.

He was slow as he slid one hand halfway up her side. It made her gasp (it always did), and her shudder hit his palm like a miniscule earthquake. They wouldn’t break the dishes tonight. Oh, no. He’d shake something loose inside Sasha, some fragment of a star, and she’d light up like a constellation, all the dots linked again. Her humor, her confidence. Her resilience, which took such a beating sometimes. He would put her back in order, fill in the star charts until they were complete, and she, looking at the picture, would name herself again. Sasha, sweet Sasha. His lighthouse on the cliffs.

She was warm in his hands, warm and fluid as water, and he let her drag his thumb up and around her breast, over the soft juncture just below her arm, all the way up her neck to her lips, where she cradled his hand in hers and kissed it. She traced letters into his palm, and he closed his eyes to decipher them. Y-O-U-R-S. It made him smile.

“Yours, huh? You already knew I belonged to you, didn’t you, Sash?” But she shook her head and pointed to herself.

“You belong to yourself,” he said, quiet, sliding one hand slowly up her side and back down again. “You belong to yourself first. But then you’ve given yourself to me, and I’m so grateful for that, S. I never stopped being grateful.” He kissed her neck, and when she gasped this time, he could feel her pulse where she pressed into his thigh. 

Tim pulled the shirt off one arm, arranging it so the fabric draped over half her body. She was silent as he moved, her back straight and proud, her shoulders thrown back slightly, as if she were looking at him from a high place. 

His half-moon. Goddess of the in-between.

Tim leaned forward and set his head against her heart. Slowly, he moved so his hair teased her skin, and she didn’t stop herself from moaning, her hands flying to the back of his head. 

She whimpered when he pulled away, the sound breaking open when he kissed one breast and then the other, his tongue hot and lazy. She pushed herself against him, grinding awkwardly against his knee, but she wanted him to take his time. That was the point of it, the lingering. How he made such small feelings last. 

He was so careful tonight, wasn’t he? Was he always this slow with her, like he was putting a broken artifact together, piece by piece? 

Sasha fell back on the bed when he licked between her breasts, her hips jutting up. Tim waited for her to tug him down before he climbed over her, one knee pressed gently between her thighs. He did that gesture she loved again, his hair feather-soft against her side, and she whined, pressing his hand clumsily to her thigh.

“Here?” He pressed his palm against the inside of her thigh. “Tell me you want it, Sash.”

No, not like an artifact, not some ancient, dusty thing. 

If a painter were to depict this moment, they would make it blue. Blue for the bedsheets, blue for Sasha’s shirt. Blue for the tinge of moonlight in her rumpled hair. But there was no painter, no one there to watch or misinterpret, and when Tim kissed her birthmark, he could feel her color come back, all the rose-flush and sunset and wine and bruise he knew her to be. 

Sasha giggled when he tickled her side, the laugh breaking into a gasp as his hands jumped to her knees. He paused until she pulled his hand higher with a small whimper. 

“I’ve got you,” he repeated. He slid his hands to the inside of her thighs. “You know that, don’t you? You know I wouldn’t go anywhere for the world?” She looked at him like he could make the sun rise just by wishing it, and maybe it was true. Maybe that’s what trust was: putting all the indisputable facts you were taught into someone else’s hands. Sasha gave him the world, and Tim reconstructed it into something kinder, warmed it up in a pan for her in the morning. 

Tim slowed his hands until they were still. 

Sometimes Sasha wanted more from him, but on these nights, it was mostly permission she craved. She crept her hands down until they were on top of his, a blush turning her face quiet and shy.

“Go ahead,” he said, his quiet voice like dawn breaking. Sasha closed her eyes again. She pushed her hands past the waistband of her shorts, and he just watched for a moment, his mouth watering, his heart swelling with love and more than a little awe. 

“If I might make the tiniest request?” Sasha raised an eyebrow, her lips quirked up in a smile. 

He traced a line from her neck to her waist, light this time, light enough to make her eyes fly open, to make her squirm and buck her hips against her hand. 

“Go slow with yourself.” She stuck her tongue out at him, the gesture followed by a giggle, but her hands grew slower. Tim listened to her breathe, the ragged stops and starts that were all he had of her voice. 

“It’s just us,” he said, his body curled close to hers, his voice barely more than an exhale against her neck. “It’s just you and me.” He drew circles on her shoulder. “Are you almost ready? Are you impatient yet, Sasha? Do you want more?” She whined, twisting her neck to face him. Tim watched her eyelids flutter, looked into the part of her lips. “I think you are.”

He sat up and hovered his hands above her waist. God, she was lovely. Perfect, wild, impossible Sasha. 

In one steady motion, Tim ran both hands from her hips to her shoulders, so firm and slow that she squirmed in search of his hands.

“Open your eyes,” he whispered, and she did, for a moment, before it was too much to bear.

There she was. Face flushed, hair all out of place, a moan falling out of her mouth like she’d never wanted anything as much as this. She shuddered, her lips forming the shape of his name but not the sound of it, and it wasn’t long until she went still, her mouth twisting under an unbidden sadness.

Tim stroked her hair when the tears came. They always did—nothing to worry about, more residual than anything. But he still felt a shock of relief when she whispered his name, her words flooding back to her. 

“You feeling OK?”

“I’ve been better.”

“Of course,” he said solemnly. “Can’t be at your best in a pair of gym shorts.” She laughed against him, a full, warm laugh, and a breathy _can-I-kiss-you_ spilled out of him. She made him young again, but only briefly. They didn’t have to be children anymore. They could be the grown-up versions of themselves, the kind of people who solved problems and kissed about it later. 

“I’m sorry I kept you up so late,” she said, stifling a yawn.

“I sleep better when you sleep better,” he said, gently guiding the two of them down so they were covered by the blankets. “But I expect you to drag me out of bed if necessary tomorrow. You hear me?”

“Loud and clear, captain.” She shifted her arms around him and hummed, a small, sleepy sound that made him think of leaves after rain. 

“Wake me up if you get scared,” he whispered into her hair. 

“I’ll be OK now, I think,” she mumbled, the words slurred soft by sleep. “Tim?”

“Sasha?”

“Don’t go far, OK?” He pressed her closer to him, worked his fingers into her hair. 

“I’m not moving an inch,” he said, barely audible in the room’s heavy silence. “Not an inch. Alright?”

When she woke up the next morning, orange light peeking through the window blinds, Tim was curled up like a child beside her, one hand secure on her back. 

She’d wake him up, sure. But for a moment, she’d watch the flickers of motion across his face, the shadows that flashed like minnows breaking the water’s surface and swimming down again. Maybe she could tell him about it. Maybe she’d describe the feeling of—

No, there weren’t words for this sort of thing.

When she woke him up with a kiss and a smile, he didn’t need any words to know what she meant.


End file.
